Today Greg will be doing a speed demo of several tools in class today, Additionally you'll be working in groups to present your plans for your project to solicit feedback/advice from your peers. For next class you are expected to:
- Install the panels module and play around with it as per Greg's demo. For those of you who have been frustrated with positioning elements within a page thus far in Drupal this module might be of particular interest to you. Even if you don't want to use it, investigating it will make you realize where the UI for placing content on the page is headed within Drupal. (30 min)
- Install the Omega theme and Omega tools, create a sub theme and make it default and play around with the various configuration options under Appearance >> <your theme> settings. There are lots of great themes for Drupal 7, but this is my personal favourite and I imagine at least 25% of the class will select this to work with for the final project. Again, even if you don't use it looking under the hood of Omega will definitely benefit how you think about themes in Drupal. (30 min)
- Organize yourself in groups of 4-5. Each student should present their sketches/wireframes/plans for their site to the group for 8-10 minutes and get your peers to help you brainstorm how you might organize the site. This conversation doesn't necessarily need to address 'what modules you will use' but it would be very beneficial if you start talking through what your site content types will be. From today onwards it is expected that you'll have rough wireframes/illustrations of your plan for your site on hand at all times to reference when you seek consultation with Jeremy, myself or your peers. (45-60 minutes)
- Today, or before next class, spend 15-20 minutes poking through the Potential Final Project Modules page and investigate various jQuery plugins that you might want to integrate with your site. Spend some time on drupal.org in the modules section and if you find anything exciting, add it to that list.